Abstract: This is a paper of two parts. The first suggests a number of questions concerning agrarian change in capitalism, grouped by their concern with social forces and dynamics internal to the countryside, rural–urban interconnections internal to the ‘national’, the contributions of agriculture to industrialization likewise within the ‘national’ and those ‘external’ determinants grounded in capitalist world economy. The second part draws on the papers in this special issue by Chinese scholars, to argue the continuing relevance of questions about commodification, differentiation and accumulation from below and from above, in agrarian change in China today.